Playful Swordfights with Nerf N-Force

My sons love to roughhouse with me and we play all sorts of role playing games and physical activities including wrestling, running, play sword fighting and more. So I picked up three Nerf N-Force swords from Walmart last week and we opened them up and have spent probably five hours in four day doing mock fencing. We would simulate the fight scenes from The Princess Bride, and my almost six year old would enjoy disarming me and slaying me, with my three year old always going around to try and flank me while I am busy battling my older boy.

It is a physical activity that gets us sweating, moving and teaches hand and eye coordination and builds reflexes, the swords are durable, rugged compared to cheap foam swords, but they are also harder and can cause minor injuries if you swing and get whacked with them too hard in the face, or jabbed too hard with them. That being said they are far safer than plastic swords which can even get sharp or cut when they get scratches on them, and they are much more fun to fence with. They extra weight makes them easier to strike and deflect incoming attacks and the blades do not bend as with cheaper foam swords.

If your kids love pretend sword fighting, I highly recommend the Nerf N-Force swords, now if you are balking about spending $13.00 on a foam sword, remember this. If your kids play with the swords a total of forty hours lets say over the life of the sword, then that means those swords cost you 32 cents per hour of activity. If they last longer then the cost per hour of play goes down even further. So think about when you pay $9 for a 1.5 hour movie at the theater, or $20 for an action figure at the store, the cost really isn’t much compared the the amount of play hours you get with the sword.

-Justin Germino